Largest Pharmaceutical Company in U.S. Moving its HQ from California to DFW

The country’s largest pharmaceutical distributor, McKesson Corp., announced it will move its global headquarters from San Francisco to Irving in April.

The company ranked sixth on the Fortune 500 list last year with $198.5 billion in revenue in 2017. When the company relocates to DFW, it will be the second-largest public company in the region behind ExxonMobil Corp., which maintains official headquarters in Irving, and ahead of AT&T Inc., with its headquarters in downtown Dallas.

“We are excited to strengthen our presence in Texas and make Las Colinas our official global headquarters,” said John H. Hammergren, chairman and CEO of McKesson Corp. in a prepared statement. “Governor Abbott and the Irving/Las Colinas community have provided tremendous support since we opened our Las Colinas campus last April. Making this move will improve efficiency, collaboration, and cost-competitiveness, while providing an exceptional work environment for our employees.”

“I’m delighted McKesson, a Fortune 6 company, is making Texas the home of its new global headquarters,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbott in the release. “The company has a long record of success in our state. McKesson’s expansion is an example of the kind of high-quality companies and jobs Texas has attracted as a result of our focus on economic growth, and I am proud to welcome them to the Lone Star State.”

According to the news release, McKesson Corp. will maintain 1,400 employees in California that will work mostly in sales and distribution. In addition to McKesson’s relocating C-suite, the Las Colinas campus is a regional hub for the company’s operations, information technology, finance and accounting, marketing and sales, administration, purchasing, and project management. In total, the company employs 64,500 globally, per the latest SEC filings.

“We are proud that McKesson has decided to make Irving/Las Colinas its official, corporate home,” said Irving Mayor Rick Stopfer. “Irving is an amazing city with talented, hard-working people and wonderful amenities. We’re delighted to have yet another Fortune 500 company make Irving their global headquarters.”

“As part of our strategic growth initiative, we’ve developed a hub location strategy, co-locating people based on the type of work they do to improve teamwork, advance innovation and increase efficiency,” said McKesson Corp.’s President and COO Brian Tyler in the statement. “Bringing employee groups together in key locations will make McKesson a more streamlined and agile company, complementing our investments and improving operating profit growth for the organization.”

“We are taking great effort, care and consideration to make this transition as seamless as possible for our associates who will be affected by this transition,” Tyler said. “It is important to us that every employee is treated with dignity and respect, consistent with McKesson’s ICARE shared principles. San Francisco-based employees are being offered the opportunity to relocate to Las Colinas and other hub locations. We look forward to bringing even more of our team together in our new, world-class global headquarters.”